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Maya Angelou/Transcript
Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby A canary sings in a cage. Moby and Tim observe the bird. TIM: Man, that guy sure likes to sing! Tim reads from a typed letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, who was Maya Angelou? Thanks, Kimmi. Maya Angelou was, well, she was a lot of things. An image shows Maya Angelou. TIM: She spent time as a waitress, a cook, a singer, a dancer, a journalist, a poet, an actor, and a director, although she's best known for her writing. Images illustrate the occupations Tim describes. TIM: She was born Marguerite Johnson in Saint Louis, Missouri on April 4, 1928. A U.S. map shows Saint Louis, Missouri. TIM: Her childhood was rough. As a young girl, she was abused by her mother's boyfriend. And for about four years she wouldn't speak to anyone except her brother. She moved back and forth between homes, and sometimes she didn't even have a home! An image shows Maya as a girl carrying a satchel of her belongings and walking near railroad tracks. TIM: For a while, she lived with other homeless children in abandoned cars at a junkyard. An image shows Maya sleeping in a car at a junkyard. MOBY: Beep. TIM: I know. She really went through some hard times. But Angelou turned those struggles into great literature. Her poems, plays, and books explore oppression in lots of different forms: oppression of black people by white people; of women by men; and of the poor by the rich. Images of stick figures symbolize the types of oppression Tim describes. TIM: Her most famous work is I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which was published in 1969. An image shows this book. TIM: In it, she tells the story of a young girl named Maya growing up in Arkansas in the 1930s. At that time in the South, whites and blacks were segregated: they shopped in different stores, lived in different parts of town, they even went to different schools. Side by side images show white kids at a new, red brick school and black kids at a rundown school. TIM: Black people were considered inferior to whites in pretty much every way. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Yeah, it's hard to believe that this wasn't even that long ago! In the book, racism isn't Maya's only problem. She goes through some rough events, including her mom abandoning her. She feels trapped by her poverty, her skin color, and her gender. Because of all these things, Maya thinks that she is totally powerless over her body and her destiny. An animation shows Maya's mom leaving Maya alone on her home's stoop. Darkness closes in around Maya and prison bars descend in front of her. TIM: But over the course of the book, she learns to assert herself and take control of her life. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, the character Maya isn't exactly a younger version of Maya Angelou. The book is based on her childhood, but it's not a strict autobiography: that's a book where someone writes their own life story. Instead, Angelou combined fact and fiction in order to make her story more powerful. The book also has shifting perspective: sometimes the character speaks as an adult and sometimes as a child. So when you read it, you get two different perspectives on the events of Maya's life. An animation shows the profiles of the child and an adult Maya looking at each other and taking turns speaking. TIM: The book also uses a lot of dialect, or bits of language special to a geographic area, to really evoke the rural South of Angelou's childhood. An animation shows black workers picking and carrying cotton. MOBY: Beep. TIM: She followed it up with five more autobiographical novels that cover the rest of her full life, as well as several volumes of poetry. One, called Give Me A Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Die was nominated for the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. Angelou also had a career in film and television, writing screenplays, directing films, and appearing in programs. Images illustrate the film and television careers Tim describes. TIM: She's even been nominated for Tony and Emmy awards for acting. Side by side images show a Tony and Emmy statue. TIM: In 1993, she read her poem, On the Pulse of Morning, at President Bill Clinton's inauguration. She became the first African American, and the first woman, to receive this honor! An image shows Angelou reading the poem at the president's inauguration. TIM: And in 2010, she accepted the Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama, the country's first African-American president. An image shows the president placing a medal on Angelou's neck. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Even toward the end of her life, Angelou never slowed down. She was finishing a new book when she passed away in 2014. She was 86. TIM: Hey, hey, Moby, why don't we open that cage? Moby opens the cage and the canary flies away. Category:BrainPOP Transcripts Category:BrainPOP English Transcripts Category:BrainPOP Social Studies Transcripts